Culture

A trusting therapeutic relationship and outcome-oriented collaboration between therapist and patient are critical for the successful treatment of mental illness. And it pays to start early in therapy, a series of meta-studies by a task force of the American Psychological Association (APA) led by UZH psychology professor Christoph Flueckiger shows.

Depression, anxiety, addiction - 30 percent of the world's population experience mental illness at least once in their lifetime. Times of uncertainty and isolation such as the current coronavirus pandemic bear a particular risk. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), mental illness is one of the greatest and most stigmatized problems of modern societies. Intense efforts are under way in the healthcare sector to improve the relevant treatment options and make them as cost-efficient as possible. Psychotherapy has been shown to be a flexible and low-threshold primary treatment option.

International meta-analyses of 400 studies

The relationship between therapist and patient and how it influences treatment success has long been neglected in medicine. In recent years, however, this topic has received more and more attention. "The therapist-patient relationship is especially significant when it comes to treating mental disorders," says Christoph Flueckiger, professor of psychological interventions and psychotherapy at the University of Zurich. "The therapeutic process can trigger unpleasant emotions and require patients to consciously confront their experiences and behaviors."

Led by Flueckiger and featuring researchers from 17 countries, a task force of the American Psychological Association (APA) has now conducted a series of meta-analyses. They investigated almost 400 empirical studies with regard to how the therapeutic relationship affects treatment outcome. Their analyses show that in practically all of the included studies, it was possible to predict the outcome of the therapy from the quality of the therapeutic relationship, and that held true across all treatment approaches, outcome measurements, patient characteristics and countries.

Significance of working alliance more than mere side effect

"Treatments for mental disorders are particularly successful when the therapist and the patient work together in a trusting, outcome-oriented relationship," summarizes Flueckiger. Within this so-called working alliance, both parties agree on the tasks, approach and goals of therapy, and collaborate to reach them.

Some voices in the scientific discourse have suspected that the working alliance between therapist and patient and the accompanying treatment success were merely a side effect brought about by other factors. Some of the factors believed to play a role include previous treatment experience, symptom severity, therapeutic approach or progress made during the therapeutic process. However, the task force led by Christoph Flueckiger found no evidence whatsoever that these factors detracted from the working alliance's significance for the outcome of therapy.

Early alliance is crucial

The findings highlight the importance of the early phase of treatment for the outcome. "Early in treatment, there is a positive reciprocal link between severity of symptoms and working alliance, and this often results in a positive upward spiral," explains Flueckiger. In other words, a strong mutual relationship between a therapist and a patient helps reduce symptoms, which in turn reinforces the therapeutic relationship.

"Our studies provide evidence that it is worth investing in a respectful, trusting therapeutic collaboration, especially when it comes to treating mental illness," says Flueckiger. While this idea is also demanded in other medical fields, implementation and training is often insufficient.

The question of how small, dwarf galaxies have sustained the formation of new stars over the course of the Universe has long confounded the world's astronomers. An international research team led by Lund University in Sweden has found that dormant small galaxies can slowly accumulate gas over many billions of years. When this gas suddenly collapses under its own weight, new stars are able to arise.

There are around 2 000 billion galaxies in our Universe and, while our own Milky-Way encompasses between 200 and 400 billion stars, small dwarf galaxies contain only a thousand times less. How stars are formed in these tiny galaxies has long been shrouded in mystery.

However, in a new study published in the research journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a research team led from Lund University has established that dwarf galaxies are capable of lying dormant for several billion years before starting to form stars again.

"It is estimated that these dwarf galaxies stopped forming stars around 12 billion years ago. Our study shows that this can be a temporary hiatus", says Martin Rey, an astrophysicist at Lund University and the leader of the study.

Through high-resolution computer simulations, the researchers demonstrate that star formation in dwarf galaxies ceased as a result of the heating and ionisation from the strong light of newborn stars. Explosions of so-called white dwarfs - small faint stars made of the core that remains when normal-sized stars die -further contribute in preventing the star formation process in dwarf galaxies.

"Our simulations show that dwarf galaxies are able to accumulate fuel in the form of gas, which eventually condenses and gives birth to stars. This explains the observed star formation in existing faint dwarf galaxies that has long puzzled astronomers," states Martin Rey.

The computer simulations used by the researchers in the study are amongst the most expensive that can be carried out within physics. Each simulation takes as long as two months and requires the equivalent of 40 laptop computers operating around the clock. The work is continuing with the development of methods to better explain the processes behind star formation in our Universe's smallest galaxies.

"By deepening our understanding of this subject, we gain new insights into the modelling of astrophysical processes such as star explosions, as well as the heating and cooling of cosmic gas. In addition, further work is underway to predict how many such star-forming dwarfs exist in our Universe, and could be discovered by astronomical telescopes" concludes Martin Rey.

Billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide risk being lost into the atmosphere due to tropical forest soils being significantly more sensitive to climate change than previously thought.

Carbon emissions from soils in tropical forests - which store one quarter of the world's soil carbon - could increase dramatically if temperatures continue to rise in line with current predictions, researchers say.

A new experiment conducted in Panama suggests these harmful emissions of soil carbon could rise by 55 per cent if the climate warms by four degrees Celsius.

Carbon dioxide is released naturally by soils through decomposition and plant root activity. However, the release of so much extra carbon dioxide - which the study found was coming from increased decomposition of soil organic matter - could trigger further global warming.

Previous research has shown that rising temperatures threaten to release carbon locked away in cooler or frozen soils - such as in the Arctic tundra. Until now, tropical soils were thought to be less sensitive to the effects of climate warming.

A team led by researchers from the University of Edinburgh conducted a large-scale experiment in a tropical forest on Barro Colorado Island in the Panama Canal.

They built heating devices and buried them one metre into the forest soil. Over a two-year period the equipment - fitted with heating cables and a thermostat - kept the experimental areas four degrees warmer than the surrounding soil.

The findings show that as much as an extra eight tonnes of soil carbon could be released as carbon dioxide from every hectare of tropical forest each year at the higher temperatures.

Researchers expect the rate of emissions will eventually decline in the experimentally warmed soils, but they do not yet know how long this will take, or the long-term impact of soil warming on climate change.

They will continue the experiment - known as the Soil Warming Experiment in Lowland Tropical Rainforest, or SWELTR - to better understand how tropical forests respond to a warming world.

Eating while doing something perceptually-demanding makes it more difficult to notice when you feel full, shows new research from the University of Sussex.

Professor Martin Yeomans, Dr Sophie Forster and colleagues found that when your senses are taken up by an engaging task, you are less likely to be able to adjust how much extra food or drink you consume. The team tested 120 participants, giving them lower and higher calorie drinks and giving them tasks which demanded both low and high amounts of their attention. The paper "Ingested but not perceived: response to satiety cues disrupted by perceptual load" is published today 12 August 2020 in the journal Appetite.

The team found that participants who were fully engaged in a perceptually-demanding task ate roughly the same amount of follow-up crisps regardless of whether or not they were initially given a high or low calorie drink. But the people who were engaged in a task which demanded less of them could adjust how much of the additional snack they ate. The people in this group ate 45% fewer crisps after the higher energy drink than after the lower energy drink.

Previous research has shown that when perceptual demand is high - so that's where the senses are engaged fully - then the brain filters out some of the sensory information. This is the first time that research has shown that sensory and nutrient cues associated with becoming full (satiety) could be filtered out in a similar way.

Professor Martin Yeomans from the School of Psychology at the University of Sussex, said:

"Our study suggests that if you're eating or drinking while your attention is distracted by a highly engaging task, you're less likely to be able to tell how full you feel. You're more likely to keep snacking than if you'd been eating while doing something less engaging. This is important for anyone wanting to stay a healthy weight: if you're a habitual TV-watching snacker - watching, say, an engaging thriller or mystery, or a film with a lot of audio or visual effects - you're not likely to notice when you feel full. Video-gamers and crossword solvers should also take note!

"We already knew that feeling full could be affected by the texture and appearance of food, as well as pre-existing expectations about how full we think a type of food should make us feel. Now we also know that feeling full depends on how much sensory information our brains are processing at the time."

About the research

One-hundred and twenty participants consumed either a low-satiety (75kcal) or high-satiety (272kcal and thicker texture) drink while simultaneously completing a task which was either low or high in perceptual demand. The participants who were given the low perceptual load task, and were given the high-satiety drink felt more full and ate 45% less of the snack offered to them afterwards. However, the participants who were given the higher load perception task were less able to tell when they felt full, and ate more of the snacks offered to them. The researchers conclude that a person's ability to notice when the body feels full depends on how much available attention there is 'left' in the brain.

The results provide the first evidence that Load Theory of attention (the idea that a person has a limited amount of sensory information they can notice) can be successfully applied to eating habits.

Nutritional information displayed prominently on food products which give consumers information on salt, sugar and calorie content play a significant role in nudging people towards better dietary choices, according to new research.

The study, from health economists at the universities of Bath and Bristol published in the Journal of Health Economics, is the first to evaluate the impact of Front-of-Pack nutritional labelling on retailers’ store-branded products, which was first introduced back in 2006.

Their results find a reduction in the quantity of labelled store-branded food purchased (for example ready meals, pizzas, burgers, etc.) and an overall improvement in the nutritional composition of consumers’ shopping baskets where labelling was displayed. Significantly, these improvements in food shopping habits were most prominently observed across poorer households.

In 2006, the UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) recommended retailers to introduce Front-of-Pack (FOP) labelling on their store-brand products on seven types of foods (ready meals, burgers/sausages, pies, breaded/coated meats, pizzas, sandwiches and cereal). The recommendation was taken up by several UK retailers (Waitrose, Co-Op, Marks & Spencer, and Asda) who each introduced it at different times between March 2006 and September 2007.

Retailers introduced two types of nutritional labelling. Some introduced a Traffic Light System, a colour-coded scheme denoting the amount of nutrients by the colours red (high), amber (medium) and green (low), whilst some others introduced a hybrid system incorporating both a traffic light system and Guideline Daily Amounts (GDAs), where both colours and the contribution that each of these nutrients make towards the adult GDA were displayed.

By drawing on differences observed in the food choices of consumers who shopped in stores where labelling was displayed, to changes for consumers shopping elsewhere, the results from the new study show that on average, as a result of labelling, households improved the quality of their diet by reducing the total monthly calories from labelled store-brand foods by 588 Kcal, saturated fats by 14g, sugars by 7g, and sodium by 0.8mg. Hybrid labelling was found to be most effective at shifting choices.

The research comes as the UK government sets out its new obesity strategy in response to covid-19, unveiling as part of it a number of measures including menu calorie labelling to help people make healthier choices when eating out. The team behind the study say these new results can help inform future policies in this area.

Lead researcher, Dr Eleonora Fichera from the Department of Economics at the University of Bath explains: “Our results suggest that nutritional labelling on food products can play an important role in starting to shift behaviours towards more healthier food choices whether that be during the weekly shop in a supermarket, or potentially through new healthier menu choice options. Labelling has a dual effect in better informing consumers about the nutritional value of the products they put in their shopping basket, but it may also incentivise manufactures towards better quality food products.

“This of course is not a panacea to solve the obesity problem, which is multi-faceted and needs to be tackled with a much more systemic approach. But these results provide policymakers with further evidence that such measures can make an important contribution.”

A new study shows that in addition to blood, endurance exercise induces changes in sweat biomolecule levels. These findings lay the groundwork for the development of future noninvasive exercise monitoring systems that utilize sweat as a biomarker source.

Sweating is an important part of thermoregulation during exercise, yet the potential for sweat as a biomarker source has not been established. Currently, the key limiting steps of using sweat as a biomarker source for exercise monitoring are the low abundance of biomarkers and variation in the volume of sweat in different environments and in different persons.

"Previously, sweat has been utilized in the diagnostics of certain diseases, such as cystic fibrosis. In addition, several drugs are secreted into sweat, enabling detection of the drug from sweat instead of blood," explains postdoctoral researcher Sira Karvinen from the Gerontology Research Center and Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences, University of Jyväskylä, Finland.

New finding: Extracellular vesicles in sweat contain microRNAs

Evaporation of sweat from the skin surface lowers body temperature preventing overheating of the body in hot environments as well as during strenuous exercise. Although sweat is a natural by-product of exercise and has been studied for several decades, a role for it as a biomarker source in the field of exercise has not been established.

It has previously been observed that similarly as blood and other body fluids, sweat contains extracellular vesicles. Extracellular vesicles are composed of a lipid bilayer and a core containing transported signal molecules, which cells release to facilitate communication between cells and tissues. A novel finding of the current study was that sweat extracellular vesicles contain microRNA molecules. MicroRNAs regulate several biological processes and have been identi?ed as essential mediators in exercise adaptations. Previously, endurance exercise has shown to change the level of several microRNAs in blood.

"In our study we examined how elevation in body temperature induced by sauna and endurance exercise protocols affect the abundance of microRNAs in sweat and serum extracellular vesicles. Endurance exercise protocols were carried out with a bicycle ergometer," says Urho Kujala, Professor of sports and exercise medicine, from the Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. "Our aim was to reveal the potential of microRNAs in sweat extracellular vesicles in monitoring exercise performance."

In the present study sweat samples were harvested from the study subjects during sauna bathing and during three different endurance exercise tests: a maximal aerobic capacity test and high and low intensity endurance exercise tests. Sweat was collected during the entire duration of each test from both arms and blood samples were taken before and after each test.

Sweat may be used as a biomarker source for exercise monitoring in the future

The present study showed that the abundance of certain microRNAs changed in response to exercise of different intensity in sweat extracellular vesicles. In particular, the high-intensity endurance exercise test induced an increase in the studied microRNAs in serum and sweat.

"Our study is the first to show that sweat possesses unique miR carrier content that is different from that observed in blood," Karvinen explains. "This may partly explain the observation that sweat and serum microRNA levels are not similar."

Based on the results of the present study, sweat has a potential to serve as a biomarker source for future exercise monitoring systems. However, sweat possesses a unique miR carrier content that should be taken into account when planning analyses from sweat as a substitute for serum. There are currently no commercially available sweat-based monitoring systems, as first there is a need to invent new technologies to robustly detect very small amounts of biomarkers.

Did the man bite the dog, or was it the other way around? When processing an utterance, words need to be assembled into the correct interpretation within working memory. One aspect of comprehension is to establish 'who did what to whom'. This process of unification takes much longer than basic events in neurobiology, like neuronal spikes or synaptic signaling. Hartmut Fitz, lead investigator at the Neurocomputational Models of Language group at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, and his colleagues propose an account where adaptive features of single neurons supply memory that is sufficiently long-lived to bridge this temporal gap and support language processing.

Model comparisons

Together with researchers Marvin Uhlmann, Dick van den Broek, Peter Hagoort, Karl Magnus Petersson (all Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics) and Renato Duarte (Jülich Research Centre, Germany), Fitz studied working memory in spiking networks through an innovative combination of experimental language research with methods from computational neuroscience.

In a sentence comprehension task, circuits of biological neurons and synapses were exposed to sequential language input which they had to map onto semantic relations that characterize the meaning of an utterance. For example, 'the cat chases a dog' means something different than 'the cat is chased by a dog' even though both sentences contain similar words. The various cues to meaning need to be integrated within working memory to derive the correct message. The researchers varied the neurobiological features in computationally simulated networks and compared the performance of different versions of the model. This allowed them to pinpoint which of these features implemented the memory capacity required for sentence comprehension.

Towards a computational neurobiology of language

They found that working memory for language processing can be provided by the down-regulation of neuronal excitability in response to external input. "This suggests that working memory could reside within single neurons, which contrasts with other theories where memory is either due to short-term synaptic changes or arises from network connectivity and excitatory feedback", says Fitz.

Their model shows that this neuronal memory is context-dependent, and sensitive to serial order which makes it ideally suitable for language. Additionally, the model was able to establish binding relations between words and semantic roles with high accuracy.

"It is crucial to try and build language models that are directly grounded in basic neurobiological principles," declares Fitz. "This work shows that we can meaningfully study language at the neurobiological level of explanation, using a causal modelling approach that may eventually allow us to develop a computational neurobiology of language."

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Cratering job quality and weak wage growth in the U.S. have typically been attributed to a combination of technological change, waning worker bargaining power and increased pressures from trade and financial markets. But according to research co-written by a University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign expert who studies economic sociology, increased industry concentration also has dire consequences for workers' wages and job quality.

Dominant firms in concentrated industries can effectively constrain downstream economic opportunities for buyers and suppliers because their transaction partners lack alternatives, thereby making profits for workers to bargain over all the more scarce, said Richard Benton, a professor of labor and employment relations at Illinois.

"When we think about wage stagnation, wage inequality and job quality in the U.S., we don't often think about the role firms play in the marketplace - both on the input side and on the output side," he said. "When you have a supply chain that's dominated by a very powerful firm, or you have entire industries or markets that are dominated by very powerful firms, that makes it more difficult for smaller firms that do business with them to be successful and turn a profit. And that, in turn, shrinks the economic surplus available for workers."

Benton and co-author Ki-Jung Kim, a U. of I. graduate student, calculated market-constraint measures for recent years - 1997, 2002, 2007 and 2012 - in the U.S. using data on interindustry transactions and linking them with data from the Current Population Survey on individuals' wages and employment benefits.

Market constraint captures the extent to which firms in an industry are heavily dependent on powerful suppliers and buyers in upstream or downstream industries, according to the paper.

"With this approach, we were able to identify the market-constraint effect using individuals' movement between more- and less-constrained industries," Benton said.

The analysis reveals that workers in more buyer-constrained industries - that is, industries at the mercy of the financial decisions of powerful buyers - experience lower wages and benefits. The paper also shows that market constraints reduce the economic surplus available for union bargaining, suggesting that industry concentration curbs wages and harms overall job quality, the researchers say.

"When you're in a market that's not dominated by a singular powerbroker, it's a lot easier for firms to generate profits," Benton said. "But over the last 20 years, we've seen dramatic growth in corporate profits, and part of the reason why is because when you're the singular behemoth in the market, you're in a position to dominate your supply chain. That's one of the reasons why big-box retail stores, for example, turn such a huge profit. It's not just because they control the retail industry. It's because they can exercise that power over their suppliers and effectively dictate their terms to ensure that their prices are as low as they can get it.

"That's great for consumers, but if you couple that with decreased unionization, you have a recipe for declining job quality and wage erosion for people who work at those supplier firms."

Since the 1960s, federal antitrust regulation and enforcement have overwhelmingly focused on protecting consumers against monopolistic practices from suppliers. However, courts have been more forgiving of "monopsonistic conduct" - when buyers engage in anticompetitive behavior and accumulate market power that disadvantages tangential businesses, Benton said.

"Federal antitrust regulation and enforcement have proved particularly ineffective at addressing dependency structures in economic value chains. As a result, concentrated power, particularly buyer power, has generally gone uncontested in the current regulatory framework," he said. "More broadly, our results strongly suggest that policymakers should consider labor market and inequality consequences of antitrust legislation and enforcement, not just the benefits to consumers."

The findings have important implications for policymakers, pointing to labor unions as "instrumental" to ensuring that profits are shared with workers, Kim said.

"When workers are in an industry that's dominated by very powerful buyers on the output side of the market, it reduces wages and employment benefits such as pensions and health care that would otherwise go to workers," he said. "They're more likely to be captured as profits that are returned to owners or shareholders than they are to workers."

"We need strong unions to make sure that workers are able to bargain for a slice of the pie - and also, perhaps, by focusing on antitrust efforts and competitive supply chains, to grow the pie itself," Benton said. "It's imperative that policymakers strengthen unions and pay attention to this other dimension of antitrust practices."

BEER-SHEVA, Israel...August 12, 2020 - A tuberculosis vaccine administered during the past 15 years is associated with significantly improved COVID-19 outcomes, according to a new study published in Vaccines.

Dr. Nadav Rappoport of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) Department of Software and Information Systems Engineering collaborated with colleagues Danille Klinger, Ido Blass and Prof. Michal Linial from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem to analyze the correlation between the Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine for tuberculosis and COVID-19 outcomes.

The researchers discovered that BCG regimes are associated with better COVID-19 outcomes, both in reducing infection rates and death rates per million, especially for ages 24 or younger who had received the vaccination in the last 15 years. There was no effect among older adults who had received the BCG vaccine. Many countries have stopped inoculating their entire population, but some still use BCG widely.

"Our findings suggest exploring BCG vaccine protocols in the context of the current pandemic could be worthwhile," says Rappoport. "A growing number of clinical trials for testing the efficacy of BCG vaccination have been initiated."

Dr. Rappoport and his colleagues analyzed data from 55 countries with populations of more than 3 million people, which comprise some 63% of the world's population. As the pandemic reached different countries at different dates, they aligned countries by the first date at which the country reached a death rate of 0.5 deaths per million or higher. They controlled for 23 variables including demographic, economic, pandemic-restriction-related, and country health-based. BCG vaccine administration was shown to be constantly associated with COVID-19 outcomes across the 55 countries.

To ascertain whether other vaccines also influenced COVID-19 outcomes, they conducted the same analysis for the measles and rubella vaccines and found that those did not have a significant association with COVID-19 outcomes.

Other epidemiological studies have shown the effect of the BCG vaccine beyond tuberculosis, but scientists do not yet know why the vaccine has such an effect.

Although it has become increasingly accepted for medical and recreational use, cannabis is still considered among one of the most widely used illegal substances in the United States and in many European countries. A common assumption is that cannabis consumption before or during work hours causes substandard work performance, yet there has been very little scientific exploration regarding the impact of cannabis use after working hours.

Dr. Jeremy Bernerth, management professor at San Diego State University's Fowler College of Business and H. Jack Walker, management professor at Auburn University's Raymond J. Harbert College of Business set out to determine the effects of different types of cannabis use (before, during and after hours) on work performance, especially as it relates to core job requirements, helping colleagues or their organizations, and counterproductive behavior in the workplace. Their research titled "Altered States or Much to Do About Nothing? A Study of When Cannabis Is Used in Relation to the Impact It Has on Performance" was recently published in Group & Organization Management.

"Given the popularity of cannabis on a national level, it should be of little surprise that organizations spend billions of dollars each year addressing what many believe is a problem," explained Bernerth. "To our knowledge, this is the first study to research cannabis usage in relation to workplace behaviors in nearly 20 years. We hope this research can provide organizations with the necessary information to structure their substance policies."

Surveying Employees and Their Supervisors

The researchers studied key job requirements (called "task performance" in the study), the willingness to voluntarily help the organization or their colleagues (called "citizenship behavior"), and the counterproductive work behavior of employees by surveying 281 employees and their direct supervisors. Participating employees and managers were recruited through social media and with the help of university business students, though cannabis usage was not required of the survey participants.

Each employee was asked about the frequency and the timing of their cannabis use as it relates to their work shift (for example, how often over the past 12 months had they used cannabis within two hours before starting the workday). Their supervisors were asked to assess their employee's task performance, citizenship behavior and counterproductive work behavior.

The Results

After tabulating all the responses, the researchers found a negative correlation between those who used cannabis before and during work with task performance. This indicates a decline in performance when using cannabis prior to or while on the job. There was, however, no relationship between using cannabis after work and one's performance on the job.

They also found supervisors were more likely to report reduced citizenship behavior (or helpfulness) toward the organization and increased counterproductive work behaviors among employees who said that they used cannabis before and during work hours. However, the results showed no discernable effects for employees who used cannabis after work. The researchers also noted that there was no correlation between employee's willingness to engage in citizenship behavior aimed at their coworkers with cannabis usage regardless of the time of usage.

While the results of the study showed that supervisors reported that employee cannabis use before or on the job diminished most areas of their performance, there was no significant change in any of the work performance dimensions when employees used cannabis after work hours.

"The findings are obviously consequential for scholars and organizations who believe that all cannabis use negatively impacts workplace behaviors," said Bernerth. "Our research suggests there is no evidence that after-work usage compromises work performance as assessed by one's direct supervisor."

Cannabis Use May Offer Work-Related Benefits

Though the research doesn't offer direct evidence, Bernerth suggests that after-hours cannabis use, may offer some work-related benefits. "Individuals deciding to consume cannabis after finishing their work may be able to distract themselves from stressful on-the-job issues," said Bernerth. "The relaxation induced by cannabis may help employees restore energy spent during the day and they may subsequently return with more stamina to devote to their job once they are back on the clock."

However, one of the major challenges facing employers with substance policies is determining when employees consume cannabis. Bernerth noted that testing for cannabis consumption (through urinalysis, for example) can only detect the presence of metabolites in the system as opposed to the frequency or time of use. This may make it difficult for organizations to defend strict substance policies. Said Bererth: "Since our study shows that off-the-job cannabis use has little to no impact on workplace performance, organizations will be hard-pressed to provide legally defensible justifications for the continuation of policies prohibiting all forms of cannabis use."

An experimental vaccine is effective at preventing pneumonia in mice infected with the COVID-19 virus, according to a study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The vaccine, which is made from a mild virus genetically modified to carry a key gene from the COVID-19 virus, is described in the journal Cell Host and Microbe.

"Unlike many of the other vaccines under development, this vaccine is made from a virus that is capable of spreading in a limited fashion inside the human body, which means it is likely to generate a strong immune response," said co-senior author Michael S. Diamond, MD, PhD, the Herbert S. Gasser Professor of Medicine and a professor of molecular microbiology, and of pathology and immunology. "Since the virus is capable of replicating, it can be grown to high levels in the lab, so it's easy to scale up and should be more cost-effective than some of the other vaccine candidates. So while what we have shown is just the proof of concept, I think it's very promising. Our vaccine candidate is now being tested in additional animal models with the goal of getting it into clinical trials as soon as possible."

Diamond and colleagues - including co-senior author Sean Whelan, PhD, the Marvin A. Brennecke Distinguished Professor and head of the Department of Molecular Microbiology; and co-first authors Brett Case, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in Diamond's laboratory, and Paul W. Rothlauf, a graduate student in Whelan's laboratory - created the experimental vaccine by genetically modifying vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV), a virus of livestock that causes only a mild, short-lived illness in people. They swapped out one gene from VSV for the gene for spike from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The hybrid virus is called VSV-SARS-CoV-2.

Spike protein is thought to be one of the keys to immunity against COVID-19. The COVID-19 virus uses spike to latch onto and infect human cells, and the human body defends itself by generating protective antibodies targeting spike. By adding the gene for spike to a fairly harmless virus, the researchers created a hybrid virus that, when given to people, ideally would elicit antibodies against spike that protect against later infection with the COVID-19 virus.

The same strategy was used to design the Ebola vaccine that was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2019. That vaccine - which is made from VSV genetically modified with a gene from Ebola virus - has been safely administered to thousands of people in Africa, Europe and North America, and helped end the 2018 to 2020 Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

As part of this study, the researchers injected mice with VSV-SARS-CoV-2 or a lab strain of VSV for comparison. A subgroup was boosted with a second dose of the experimental vaccine four weeks after the initial injections. Three weeks after each injection, the researchers drew blood from the mice to test for antibodies capable of preventing SARS-CoV-2 from infecting cells. They found high levels of such neutralizing antibodies after one dose, and the levels increased 90-fold after a second dose.

Then, the researchers challenged the mice five weeks after their last dose by spraying the COVID-19 virus into their noses. The vaccine completely protected against pneumonia. At four days post infection, there was no infectious virus detectable in the lungs of mice that had been given either one or two doses of the vaccine. In contrast, mice that had received the placebo had high levels of virus in their lungs. In addition, the lungs of vaccinated mice showed fewer signs of inflammation and damage than those of mice that had received the placebo.

The experimental vaccine is still in the early stages of development.

Mice do not naturally become infected with the COVID-19 virus, so to assess whether the vaccine elicited a protective immune response in them, the researchers used genetically modified mice or, in unmodified mice, employed a complicated technique to induce susceptibility to infection. The researchers are in the process of repeating the experiments in other animal models that are naturally susceptible to the COVID-19 virus. If the vaccine also protects those animals from COVID-19, the next step would be to scale up production under what the Food and Drug Administration refers to as "good manufacturing practice (GMP) conditions" and launch a clinical trial in people.

While the data are promising, this vaccine is still months behind in the race to develop a pandemic-ending vaccine. Six vaccines are in the final stage of testing in people, and Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has said he expects a vaccine to be ready for mass distribution early next year.

"It's really going to depend on how successful the first vaccines that come out for COVID are," Whelan said. "If they don't produce a robust, durable immune response or there are safety issues, there might be the opportunity for a second-generation vaccine that could induce sterilizing immunity and interrupt the cycle of transmission."

Sweden's policy of allowing the controlled spread of Covid-19 viral infection among the population has so far failed to deliver the country's previously stated goal of herd immunity. Commenting on recent antibody testing clinical and research findings, authors of a paper published by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, write that Sweden's higher rates of viral infection, hospitalisation and mortality compared with neighbouring countries may have serious implications for Scandinavia and beyond.

Rather than imposing a hard lockdown in March as most European and Scandinavian countries did, Sweden's strategy in dealing with the pandemic has been to rely on people's individual responsibility to curtail the spread of the disease. This follows the Swedish sociocultural concept of 'folkvett'; the common sense of the people as a collective.

The health authorities predicted that 40% of the Stockholm population would have had the disease and acquired antibodies by May 2020. However, the actual prevalence figure was around 15%. While clinical and research findings suggest that severely infected Covid-19 patients do acquire antibodies in the immediate and early recovery phase of their illness, antibodies are much less commonly found in only mildly ill or asymptomatic patients. This means they are very likely not to be immune, and so cannot act as a bulwark against further spread of infection amongst the community.

Lead author Professor David Goldsmith said: "It is clear that not only are the rates of viral infection, hospitalisation and mortality (per million population) much higher than those seen in neighbouring Scandinavian countries, but also that the time-course of the epidemic in Sweden is different, with continued persistence of higher infection and mortality well beyond the few critical weeks period seen in Denmark, Finland and Norway." He added that in these countries, rapid lock-down measures brought in from early March seem to have been initially more successful in curtailing the infection surge and thus the malign consequences of Covid-19 on the country as a whole.

Prof Goldsmith said: "We in the UK would do well to remember we nearly trod the same path as Sweden, as herd immunity was often discussed here in early March. Right now, despite strict (but tardy) lock-down in the UK, and the more measured Swedish response, both countries have seen high seven-day averaged Covid-19 death rates compared to other Scandinavian and European countries."

The authors do say, however, that only once the pandemic and impact of measures taken are fully understood, after one or two years at least, can we begin fairly then to judge what was done correctly.

A new study by Palaeontologists at the University of Southampton suggests four bones recently found on the Isle of Wight belong to new species of theropod dinosaur, the group that includes Tyrannosaurus rex and modern-day birds.

The dinosaur lived in the Cretaceous period 115 million years ago and is estimated to have been up to four metres long.

The bones were discovered on the foreshore at Shanklin last year and are from the neck, back and tail of the new dinosaur, which has been named Vectaerovenator inopinatus.

The name refers to the large air spaces in some of the bones, one of the traits that helped the scientists identify its theropod origins. These air sacs, also seen in modern birds, were extensions of the lung, and it is likely they helped fuel an efficient breathing system while also making the skeleton lighter.

The fossils were found over a period of weeks in 2019 in three separate discoveries, two by individuals and one by a family group, who all handed in their finds to the nearby Dinosaur Isle Museum at Sandown.

The scientific study has confirmed the fossils are very likely to be from the same individual dinosaur, with the exact location and timing of the finds adding to this belief.

Robin Ward, a regular fossil hunter from Stratford-upon-Avon, was with his family visiting the Isle of Wight when they made their discovery. He said: "The joy of finding the bones we discovered was absolutely fantastic. I thought they were special and so took them along when we visited Dinosaur Isle Museum. They immediately knew these were something rare and asked if we could donate them to the museum to be fully researched."

James Lockyer, from Spalding, Lincolnshire was also visiting the Island when he found another of the bones. Also a regular fossil hunter, he said: "It looked different from marine reptile vertebrae I have come across in the past. I was searching a spot at Shanklin and had been told and read that I wouldn't find much there. However, I always make sure I search the areas others do not, and on this occasion it paid off."

Paul Farrell, from Ryde, Isle of Wight, added: "I was walking along the beach, kicking stones and came across what looked like a bone from a dinosaur. I was really shocked to find out it could be a new species."

After studying the four vertebrae, paleontologists from the University of Southampton confirmed that the bones are likely to belong to a genus of dinosaur previously unknown to science. Their findings will be published in the journal Papers in Palaeontology, in a paper co-authored by those who discovered the fossils.

Chris Barker, a PhD student at the university who led the study, said: "We were struck by just how hollow this animal was - it's riddled with air spaces. Parts of its skeleton must have been rather delicate.

"The record of theropod dinosaurs from the 'mid' Cretaceous period in Europe isn't that great, so it's been really exciting to be able to increase our understanding of the diversity of dinosaur species from this time.

"You don't usually find dinosaurs in the deposits at Shanklin as they were laid down in a marine habitat. You're much more likely to find fossil oysters or drift wood, so this is a rare find indeed."

It is likely that the Vectaerovenator lived in an area just north of where its remains were found, with the carcass having washed out into the shallow sea nearby.

Chris Barker added: "Although we have enough material to be able to determine the general type of dinosaur, we'd ideally like to find more to refine our analysis. We are very grateful for the donation of these fossils to science and for the important role that citizen science can play in palaeontology."

The Isle of Wight is renowned as one of the top locations for dinosaur remains in Europe, and the new Vectaerovenator fossils will now go on display at the Dinosaur Isle Museum at Sandown, which houses an internationally important collection.

Museum curator, Dr Martin Munt, said: "This remarkable discovery of connected fossils by three different individuals and groups will add to the extensive collection we have and it's great we can now confirm their significance and put them on display for the public to marvel at.

"We continue to undertake public field trips from the museum and would encourage anyone who finds unusual fossils to bring them in so we can take a closer look. However, fossil hunters should remember to stick to the foreshore, and avoid going near the cliffs which are among the most unstable on the Island."

Isle of Wight Council Cabinet member for environment and heritage, Councillor John Hobart, said: "This is yet another terrific fossil find on the Island which sheds light on our prehistoric past - all the more so that it is an entirely new species. It will add to the many amazing items on display at the museum."

New research from two London hospital maternity units published in Anaesthesia (a journal of the Association of Anaesthetists) shows that 1 in 6 maternity workers tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies, showing they have had a previous infection. Of those testing positive, 1 in 3 were completely asymptomatic.

Worryingly, more than half (58%) of those who tested positive never met the UK Government's criteria for self-isolation, and thus did not self-isolate and continued to work as normal in their hospital. The study is by Dr Sohail (Sam) Bampoe and Dr Peter Odor, both Consultant Obstetric Anaesthetists at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and Honorary Associate Professors at University College London, London, UK.

COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, is thought to cause a milder illness in pregnancy with a greater proportion of asymptomatic carriers. This has important implications for the risk of patient-to-staff, staff-to-staff and staff-to patient transmission among health professionals working in maternity wards.

The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of previously undiagnosed SARS-CoV-2 infection in health professionals from two hospital-level maternity units, University College London Hospital and St George's Hospital in London, UK, and to determine associations between health care workers' characteristics, reported symptoms and evidence of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection using antibody testing.

The study included 200 anaesthetists (40), midwives (108) and obstetricians (52) with no previously confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19, who were tested for prior COVID-19 infection using laboratory antibody tests. Comprehensive symptom and medical histories were also collected.

A total of 29/200 (14.5%) tested positive (seropositive). The highest positivity rate was found in midwives (17/108, 15.7%) followed by obstetricians (7/52, 13.5%) and anaesthetists (5/40, 12.5%). Of those who tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies, 10/29 (35.5%) were completely asymptomatic. Fever or cough were only present in 6/29 (20.7%) and 10/29 (34.5%) respectively. Anosmia (loss of sense of taste and smell) was the most common symptom occurring in 15/29 (51.7%) of seropositive participants. More than half (58.6%) of those who tested positive had not met the national criteria for self-isolation at any point, and therefore did not self-isolate and continued to provide patient care in the hospital setting.

The authors discuss that the positivity rate was more than twice as prevalent in UK obstetric health care workers as in the general population in the UK and three times as prevalent as in the general population in the USA. However, the prevalence of seroconversion of health care workers in these London hospitals was similar to estimates of seroconversion in the general population in Greater London at 14.5%, based on sampling from blood donors. They say: "Although these results would suggest that obstetric health care workers are at a similar risk of exposure to COVID-19 as the general population, the prevalence of seroconversion among this staff group appears to be lower than reported in other frontline health care worker groups."

The authors also discuss the possibility that greater proportion of asymptomatic infection in pregnancy and generally milder symptom profile in pregnant patients may explain why obstetric health care workers appear to have a lower risk of occupational viral transmission, as SARS-CoV-2 pregnant patients may be less infective than respiratory or acute emergency patients.

They also discuss that the risk posed by infectious staff members to colleagues, pregnant women, and their offspring remains unknown. At the beginning of the current SARS-CoV 2 pandemic, the UK government advised all those with a persistent cough or fever above 37.8C to self-isolate. The data in this new study revealed that only 41.4% of health care workers who tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies met those criteria and self-isolated at any point. This means that 58.6% continued to work -- and commute -- despite active SARS-CoV-2 infection. The data showed that in this population, neither cough nor fever predicted seropositivity and the only symptom predictive of a positive test was loss of taste and smell. The UK government have since added this symptom to those that mandate self-isolation. The authors say: "Our study strongly supports this updated advice, even though it would still fail to isolate approximately 6 out of 10 infected staff."

Some limitations to the study are discussed by the authors. Based on data from other similar viruses, the duration of antibody volumes sufficient to be detected is likely to be for at least six months. However, the exact duration of antibodies showing COVID-19 infection remains unknown and recent studies have shown that mild cases might end up testing negative. As such it is possible that some individuals who were infected earlier in the year, as well as some mild cases, did not have a strong enough antibody response at the date of testing to test positive. The testing methodology used in this study may therefore underestimate the true seroconversion prevalence.

The authors conclude: "Until we have robust evidence as to the risk posed by asymptomatic infected individuals to others, and as to the risk of COVID-19 to babies, particularly during pregnancy, our study suggests that extreme caution is advisable in maternity settings, particularly the consistent use of effective personal protective equipment (PPE) and other known effective measures including social distancing of staff and the regular washing of hands. We also recommend that all obstetric healthcare institutions should consider regular serology testing for staff, as well as the immediate isolation of any staff who lose their sense of taste and smell, even in the absence of cough or fever. Regular testing and consistent use of PPE are likely to be the cornerstones of pandemic control."

Mitochondria are the powerhouse of cells which continuously convert energy from food into the chemical energy currency called ATP. This essential process depends on large protein complexes within the inner membrane of mitochondria acting similar to batteries. A new study, led by Dr. Ruchika Anand and Prof. Andreas Reichert, Heinrich-Heine-University Duesseldorf, Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology I, now found that two lipid-binding proteins located inside of mitochondria control the overall stability of these batteries. This was further shown to be linked to a unique mitochondrial lipid and its synthesis: cardiolipin. Increased build-up of a sugar-modified form of MIC26 was earlier found in blood plasma of the patients suffering from diabetic cardiomyopathy. This study provides the first link between mitochondrial structure, lipids and assembly of large respiratory protein units of mitochondria and their importance in diabetes and heart diseases.

Fat- or lipid-binding proteins called apolipoproteins are well known to bind to lipids (e.g. phospholipids and cholesterol) and to mediate formation of lipoproteins (e.g. HDL or LDL). The main function of lipoproteins is to help to transport lipids in the blood. They take part in uptake, clearance and distribution of all lipids in an organism. Several classes of these proteins are found with different functions. Surprisingly, two apolipoproteins (Apolipoprotein O (APOO/MIC26) and Apolipoprotein O-like (APOOL/MIC27) were earlier found at a location distinct from the blood, namely in mitochondria and associated with a large protein assembly called the MICOS complex. Apolipoprotein O (MIC26) occurs in two forms, a sugar-bound and a non-sugar bound form. While the non-sugar bound form is present inside the mitochondria, the sugar-bound form is found in the blood plasma. Increased quantity of the sugar-bound form in blood plasma was interestingly associated with diabetes and diabetic cardiomyopathy. A mutation in APOO/MIC26 is associated to mitochondrial myopathy, lactic acidosis, cognitive impairment and autistic features.

The research groups of Dr. Ruchika Anand and Prof. Dr. Andreas Reichert from the Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology I of the Medical faculty at the HHU in collaboration with scientists Dr. Ilka Wittig from the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and Dr. Thomas Eichmann from the University of Graz, Austria determined the function of these apolipoproteins. They found that the cooperation of the two apolipoproteins of mitochondria (APOO/MIC26 and APOOL/MIC27) are required for the global stability of major mitochondrial protein complexes involved in energy conversion by oxidative phosphorylation. These mitochondrial complexes are arranged in large assemblies so that they can work properly and efficiently to convert the energy from the food into the chemical energy in the form of ATP. The internal structure of mitochondria is arranged and sculptured to accommodate these batteries in the folds of the inner membrane called cristae. APOO/MIC26 and APOOL/MIC27 cooperate to form proper mitochondrial structure including tubular structures located at the entry point of cristae termed crista junctions. The study revealed that both proteins are required together to maintain the correct levels of the mitochondrial specific lipid cardiolipin. The aforementioned scientists found that simultaneous deletion of APOO/MIC26 and APOOL/MIC27 in a cell cause major disturbances in cellular respiration together with occurrence of abnormal mitochondrial structure. This study exemplifies the importance of mitochondrial membrane structures and large protein assemblies in diseases such as diabetic cardiomyopathy and mitochondrial myopathy. This could help to gain further insights for future therapies. The work was published after peer review in Life Science Alliance on August 11th, 2020.